Listening and Sounding in the London Underground: sonic memories as embodiments of technological infrastructure

Listening and Sounding in the London Underground: sonic memories as embodiments of technological infrastructure

ABSTRACT: From 2004 to 2005, I undertook ethnographic research with twenty-four London Underground commuters regarding memories left by this sound environment during their routine journeys (Alarcón, 2007). I was interested in their memories as remnants of subjective experience, and also, in the commonality of these memories as a reflection of a collective aural memory. I understood the commuters’ process of remembering as a “mediated action” (Werstch, 2002), mediated, in this case, by the technological infrastructure in the underground. The concept of soundscape (Schafer 1984; Truax 2001) was used to describe certain aspects of the experience; however, I found it insufficient to encompass the varied dimensions of subjective listening experience and its cultural significance. In this paper, I am revisiting these commuters’ accounts, from the perspective of remembering and listening processes, in a wider, holistic manner. Nourished by railway and subterranean environments interdisciplinary studies (Schivelbusch 1986; Pike 2007; Williams 2008), and approaches to both outer and inner listening (Augoyard 2005; Oliveros 2005), I suggest that commuters’ sonic memories are embodiments of the technological infrastructure, which is reflected in their remembered sounds, in their perception of space and time while travelling, and in social, symbolic and political connotations that shape their auralization. Derived from further comparative studies with commuters’ memories from Mexico and Paris metros, the internet-based interface “Sounding Underground” acts as a disembodied technological environment to allow one to listen to everyday narratives from a distance, acknowledging their contrasts, and commonalities, while opening a path for transcendence of our technological condition.

Ximena Alarcón biography

Ximena Alarcón is a new media artist who focuses on listening to social context related sound, connecting it to individual and collective memories. She completed a PhD in Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University and was awarded with The Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship 2007-2009 to develop “Sounding Underground” at the Institute of Creative Technologies. There, in 2010, she worked as a Programme Leader for the Masters in Creative Technologies. Deep Listening practice and telematic musical performance are current interests that expand both the connections to other territories and the social and aesthetic possibilities of working with the migratory experience. Since October 2011, she works in Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice – CRiSAP, at the University of the Arts London, as a Research Fellow, developing her project “Networked Migrations – listening to and performing the in-between space”.